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Haiku Activity Report – January 2021

115 points by mondoshawan 6y ago

ianlevesque 6y ago
Wow 20 years! Here’s the history: https://www.haiku-os.org/about/history https://www.haiku-os.org/about/history
jaegerpicker 6y ago
I'm so happy to see it's still up and running. I was a HUGE fan of BeOS and to this day I wish it had won the Apple contract, though Next was obviously an amazing choice. I hope Haiku continues to succeed!
- kiwijamo 6y ago
  BeOS was ahead of its time, that's for sure. One thing it did exceptionally well was multitasking. Even if you had a intensive task running in the background, you would never notice any lag whatsoever in the GUI. Windows/Linux/etc on the same hardware would lag horribly when doing the exact same tasks. I understand many aspects of the OS and GUI toolkit was multi-threaded (as BeOS was designed to run on, and take advantage of, systems with multiple cores). To this day there is no OS that handles multitasking as gracefully as BeOS did. I still remain disappointed that it did not see much success as it had so much potential.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    You mean as threads used to gracefully crash each other? BeOS was an interesting OS, 20 years ago, its time is due, API frozen and just like Oberon and Amiga, only usefull for nostalgic purposes.
    - Jkvngt 6y ago
      Frozen APIs are a blessing, not a curse. The only way forward is to constrain developers to a well-known standard set of tools and interfaces. We've seen what happens when they just get turned loose.
      - desktopninja 6y ago
        Yup! Honestly feels like the industry as a whole has lost the plot.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        I have a Pentium here to sell, if you feel so inclined.
keb_ 6y ago
I know a lot of folks think it looks dated, but I absolutely LOVE the aesthetics and icon art of HaikuOS.
- fb03 6y ago
  I wish I could use a Linux distro as snappy as BeOS was! Is Haiku the same in that regard?
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    I tried running it in a VM earlier last year and found the UI to be unusably laggy. It seems there were some issues with virtual mouse drivers or something and this was the "expected" experience in a VM.
    - waddlesplash 6y ago
      No, that's definitely not the expected experience for VM usage. Plenty of people run Haiku in a VM without such problems. QEMU/KVM is the best system to use, with VMware second, and VirtualBox et al. coming in last.
- mhd 6y ago
  Speaking of Icons, I love that they spent considerable time to optimze those[1], including their own vector format so that they can store it in the metadata of the file, so that displaying large folders with unique files would be speedy. [1]: https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-sixth-day-with-haiku-under-the-hood-of-resources-icons-and-packages-abec8d0e4ec6 https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-sixth-day-with-haiku-under-...
- grishka 6y ago
  > it looks dated It's a real desktop OS, with a UI meant for a keyboard and a mouse. A rarity these days.
- yakubin 6y ago
  HaikuOS looks like an OS dedicated for desktop use. I've just gotten myself a Mac mini last week. Big Sur is the ugliest OS I've ever seen. If that's where the future is heading, then I'm not sure I want to continue using computers. I could use some dated UIs, such as the Haiku one.
spijdar 6y ago
I'm intrigued by the SPARC support. Not sure if it's for sun4c/m/u, but I've got both 32 and 64 bit SPARC laptops that Haiku would be perfect for.
unicornporn 6y ago
How usable is this as a general purpose OS? I seldom see people running it outside VMs. How hard is it to find compatible hardware such as wireless cards. Does sleep/suspend work reliably? Lastly, I just LOVE the aesthetics. Even XFCE could not resist the allure of "improved" themes and also ended up welcoming CSDs.
- hakfoo 6y ago
  I know it basically worked out of the box on a Thinkpad x230 Tablet, running off a flash drive.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  There is no hardware 3D acceleration at all, but most GPUs supported by FreeBSD and Linux work fine for everyday use. Sleep and suspend are still a work in progress. WiFi and Ethernet support is heavily dependent on FreeBSD drivers, as such not every card is supported but there are a good number of supported devices. In general, a well-supported Linux/BSD machine will likely work well under Haiku (Thinkpads in particular). For me personally, the biggest thing holding it back from becoming a daily use computer is the lack of a really good web browser. WebPositive has made great strides as the native browser, but it still has a long way to go. There are ports of other mainstream browsers but most are incomplete or unstable. I sorely miss the era around 2000-2001 where I used BeOS successfully as a daily machine, able to browse the Web, access email, do document management and creation (word processing and spreadsheets), photo editing, music production, and video editing all with native-to-BeOS software. It transformed my Windows 98 machine from a slow, clunky, stuttering mess into a computer that felt like it was from the future. Nothing since has come close to that level of technological Nirvana.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    > Nothing since has come close to that level of technological Nirvana. Amiga.
  - unicornporn 6y ago
    Thanks for the short review!

115 points by mondoshawan 6y ago

Wow 20 years! Here’s the history: https://www.haiku-os.org/about/history https://www.haiku-os.org/about/history

I'm so happy to see it's still up and running. I was a HUGE fan of BeOS and to this day I wish it had won the Apple contract, though Next was obviously an amazing choice. I hope Haiku continues to succeed!

kiwijamo 6y ago
BeOS was ahead of its time, that's for sure. One thing it did exceptionally well was multitasking. Even if you had a intensive task running in the background, you would never notice any lag whatsoever in the GUI. Windows/Linux/etc on the same hardware would lag horribly when doing the exact same tasks. I understand many aspects of the OS and GUI toolkit was multi-threaded (as BeOS was designed to run on, and take advantage of, systems with multiple cores). To this day there is no OS that handles multitasking as gracefully as BeOS did. I still remain disappointed that it did not see much success as it had so much potential.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  You mean as threads used to gracefully crash each other? BeOS was an interesting OS, 20 years ago, its time is due, API frozen and just like Oberon and Amiga, only usefull for nostalgic purposes.
  - Jkvngt 6y ago
    Frozen APIs are a blessing, not a curse. The only way forward is to constrain developers to a well-known standard set of tools and interfaces. We've seen what happens when they just get turned loose.
    - desktopninja 6y ago
      Yup! Honestly feels like the industry as a whole has lost the plot.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      I have a Pentium here to sell, if you feel so inclined.

keb_ 6y ago

I know a lot of folks think it looks dated, but I absolutely LOVE the aesthetics and icon art of HaikuOS.

fb03 6y ago
I wish I could use a Linux distro as snappy as BeOS was! Is Haiku the same in that regard?
- moron4hire 6y ago
  I tried running it in a VM earlier last year and found the UI to be unusably laggy. It seems there were some issues with virtual mouse drivers or something and this was the "expected" experience in a VM.
  - waddlesplash 6y ago
    No, that's definitely not the expected experience for VM usage. Plenty of people run Haiku in a VM without such problems. QEMU/KVM is the best system to use, with VMware second, and VirtualBox et al. coming in last.
mhd 6y ago
Speaking of Icons, I love that they spent considerable time to optimze those[1], including their own vector format so that they can store it in the metadata of the file, so that displaying large folders with unique files would be speedy. [1]: https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-sixth-day-with-haiku-under-the-hood-of-resources-icons-and-packages-abec8d0e4ec6 https://medium.com/@probonopd/my-sixth-day-with-haiku-under-...
grishka 6y ago
> it looks dated It's a real desktop OS, with a UI meant for a keyboard and a mouse. A rarity these days.
yakubin 6y ago
HaikuOS looks like an OS dedicated for desktop use. I've just gotten myself a Mac mini last week. Big Sur is the ugliest OS I've ever seen. If that's where the future is heading, then I'm not sure I want to continue using computers. I could use some dated UIs, such as the Haiku one.

spijdar 6y ago

I'm intrigued by the SPARC support. Not sure if it's for sun4c/m/u, but I've got both 32 and 64 bit SPARC laptops that Haiku would be perfect for.

unicornporn 6y ago

How usable is this as a general purpose OS? I seldom see people running it outside VMs. How hard is it to find compatible hardware such as wireless cards. Does sleep/suspend work reliably? Lastly, I just LOVE the aesthetics. Even XFCE could not resist the allure of "improved" themes and also ended up welcoming CSDs.

hakfoo 6y ago
I know it basically worked out of the box on a Thinkpad x230 Tablet, running off a flash drive.
morganvachon 6y ago
There is no hardware 3D acceleration at all, but most GPUs supported by FreeBSD and Linux work fine for everyday use. Sleep and suspend are still a work in progress. WiFi and Ethernet support is heavily dependent on FreeBSD drivers, as such not every card is supported but there are a good number of supported devices. In general, a well-supported Linux/BSD machine will likely work well under Haiku (Thinkpads in particular). For me personally, the biggest thing holding it back from becoming a daily use computer is the lack of a really good web browser. WebPositive has made great strides as the native browser, but it still has a long way to go. There are ports of other mainstream browsers but most are incomplete or unstable. I sorely miss the era around 2000-2001 where I used BeOS successfully as a daily machine, able to browse the Web, access email, do document management and creation (word processing and spreadsheets), photo editing, music production, and video editing all with native-to-BeOS software. It transformed my Windows 98 machine from a slow, clunky, stuttering mess into a computer that felt like it was from the future. Nothing since has come close to that level of technological Nirvana.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  > Nothing since has come close to that level of technological Nirvana. Amiga.
- unicornporn 6y ago
  Thanks for the short review!